Passato remoto

I learned a new verb tense in Italian tonight - passato remoto. It's used for anything that happened in the far past (unless you live in Southern Italy, as my professor said, then they use it all the time). According to my professor, some Italians who don't get a good education never learn to use this tense. That freaked me out. We're not expected to know how to conjugate it, just recognize it and be able to translate the verbs into passato prossimo (the normal past tense, like I ate dinner yesterday). But still... it shocked me. If your Italian professor, who's actually from Italy, says the tense is a torture... the be prepared. There's a reason why great thinkers like Dante and Da Vinci speak Italian... probably because you have to be pretty damn committed to fully understand that language. It's beautiful, it's fantastic, and it's a dangerous. Like so many things in life.

Campus Life

College campuses... a culture of their own. Just looking for apartments for next year reminds me of this. I swear college is one of the few places where you can go from buying rare philosophy books in a used book store to tripping over empty beer cans in the streets. It's a wonderful, zany mix of intelligence and unbridled teenage stupidity. Sometimes the blend creates wonderful, amazing experiences. Other times, it's just a painful, awkward stroll through insanity.

Case and point - the Crooked House. The Crooked House is this old, character-filled place just off campus. It doesn't have a single 90-degree angle in the entire place, hence it's name. My roommates and I were looking to move in there next year and excited by its old charms and cheap price.

However, there was a major downside. According to a friend of ours that lives in the area, cops get called there every other night due to wild partying and some sort of domestic disputes. Though everyone who lives there now is moving out, there's a chance that those sort of people are attracted to the house. And that the cops might just show up, just to see how the new renters are doing. And plus, apparently someone tried to break in to another property owned by the same landlord. Thus, the Crooked House appears to be crooked in more ways than one.

So we're back to the drawing board, trying to find another place. We encounter one that had some sort of bed bug report, so that was an instant veto. Bedbugs, sheesh. However, it isn't all bad. We have found two nice places, one that was an hotel in the 1940s and a gorgeous red brick building that has a beautiful interior. Not quite as hardcore as the sparse, rustic Crooked House, but hey - at least I don't have to worry about alcoholic bedbugs, or some crazy shit like that.

But if college wasn't a hodgepodge of weirdness, what the hell would I have to inspire me?

Bush Legs

So I was reading an article from Slate today about how apparently America ships dark meat chicken to Russia because we (oddly enough) consider it waste and Russia had a chicken shortage at one point in time. I mentioned this to my roommate, [Львица], who spent a semester in Russia last year. "Oh yeah!" she said. "I know that!" She went on to tell me that because this shipment of chicken to Russia had begun during Bush's time as president, her host family called chicken legs "Bush legs." Perfect. :)

Why I might have underestimated Twitter

Yes, I admit, I never understood the point of tweeting. Who cares if you can use 140 characters to describe what's going on in your life whenever the hell you want? TMI, in my opinion. Of course, that was before I figured out how I could use it to my advantage. And like any good, slightly self-obsessed person, I decided to check Twitter out and see what it was like.

Less than 24 hours later, I am Twitter obsessed. It's quick, it's quirky, it's fun. I've got people following me (mainly from the southern half of the US for some reason) and I've done nothing more than tweet about hipsters and studying Italian. Great success. My roommates are on Twitter - one for class, one for fun - and it's like having our own mini-network online. I can get news updates, celebrity stuff, find out about new books coming out. Everything that an instant gratification culture yearns for.

Of course, it's kind of creepy. I know that by going out there, I'm sacrificing a lot of my privacy. But on the other hand, I'm also not putting me out there - only part of me. It makes me wonder if all these forums and networking sites are creating multiple dimensions within people. Not multiple personalities (as that has a pretty exact definition from a psychology standpoint, and one doesn't exactly choose to make these other personalities). But I have to admit, logging on to Facebook has a completely different vibe than logging on to Twitter. Maybe it's how I've presented myself on there, such as Facebook is a high school/personal site for me and Twitter is more about culture and work. Or maybe the differences in layout and use completely changes the vibe of how one feels when using Twitter. Makes me wonder how the people who tweet every five minutes for attention think about the site compared to those who are using it for business and networking. Or maybe there's not that much difference after all.

Regardless, it's a nice change. I'm actually kind of tired of Facebook - mainly because no one I know uses the chat features anymore. And the whole Social Network movie (which I haven't seen, but intend to) kind of puts a damper on things. I don't know, maybe I just need relearn how to use Facebook (since last year it became all about playing games on there and nothing more). But somehow the status part of Facebook is really my favorite part. And if I can get that on Twitter without the distractions of other stuff (namely those darn games - curse you, Mafia Wars!) and feel less creeped on (Twitter does have less personal info available, which I appreciate) then I can see Facebook becoming less popular. But I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon. Especially if the Oscars choose to glorify The Social Network, then I guarantee Facebook will stay popular for a long time. But it doesn't mean they won't get some competition from the Tweetland.

The Culture Vulture Project... my worst idea ever

What's the last thing a overburdened college student needs to do? Well, plenty of things, I'm sure. But I'd say starting a Twitter account, creating a blog (while I'm already part of two others for class and a failed personal one) and deciding to blog about culture (which is one of the broadest concepts in the world) might be pretty high up on the list.

Why the hell would I do this to myself then? Why wouldn't I just be satisfied sitting down and watching TV and studying at the end of the day?

Good question. One I don't have a very good answer for. But I want to be a writer (well, I am a writer, but a published one is more of what I'm going for). I'm a Cultural Studies and Psychology major at the U, and I love yapping about what I learn and what I see each day. So this seems like a no-brainer. If I get some brilliant idea after word vomiting all this crap, then I figure it'll be time well spent.

But we'll see... considering I've never used Twitter before and it took me forever to find my roommate on there (who was sitting right next to me at the dining room table and yet I couldn't find her on cyberspace) this might be an epic fail. However, there's something enticing about Twitter... something that screams (perhaps desperately), "Look at me! I have a life! I have a blog! Care about me!" But if it gets me a book, like it did for the author of Julie and Julia, is it worth consciously thinking and pursuing such an idea, even if it makes me a sellout and a showoff?

I'll let you know when I have the answer.